Thomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerGov. John Kasich dons a white lab coat to tour a portion of the massive Philips Healthcare complex in Highland Heights. He spends a lot more time in Greater Cleveland than one might expect from a Republican governor.

In Washington, Election Day this November may be the endpoint or starting point of many things. But in Columbus, Election Day is the midpoint of Republican Gov. John Kasich's four-year term.

True, the cage fight between Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Avon and GOP State Treasurer Josh Mandel of Lyndhurst is a better show. And the national result on Nov. 6 may please (for once) the geezers who can't bear seeing Barack Obama in the White House.

At the Statehouse, though, politics is about who gets which state contracts, and about whether, in writing a law or regulation, state government sides with you, with your competitors or with your customers.

Ultimately, a governor decides those things, especially now that lunatic term limits have weakened the General Assembly. In Ohio, politics is the art of the deal -- not a Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Listeners hypnotized by talk radio may actually believe government and business are enemies. The truth is, they're partners -- if a business hires the right matchmaker. It's just a matter of whether your highways are concrete or asphalt. The rest is theatrics.

Politically, Kasich is steadily recovering from Issue 2, the anti-public-employee-union ballot issue Ohio voters stomped to death in 2011. And on the administrative side, Kasich and his budget office appointees have been excellent managers of Ohio's money.

Just as some Republicans will never give Obama credit for anything, so some Democrats won't give Kasich any. Consider local governments' gripes about state aid reductions.

Fact 1: If a courthouse or city hall automatically gets a nice check from Columbus, there's no reason to run a tight ship downtown.

Fact 2: Ohio has slashed the state income tax. How often does an Ohio city, village or school district prune a local income tax? The plague of local income taxes is a factor, justified or not, in Ohio's reputation as a high-tax state. Unless local governments manage better, that reputation won't improve.

Meanwhile, the Kasich crowd knows very well that one reason Kasich unseated Democrat Ted Strickland in 2010 was Strickland's political weakness in Greater Cleveland. So Kasich seems to be in Cleveland every time you turn around.

Kasich, like a fellow Republican conservative, House Speaker William Batchelder of Medina, has also built bridges to Greater Cleveland's black leadership. Time was when state officials, knowing they'd be darned if they did or darned if they didn't, tried to avoid Cleveland's school problems, despite in-depth auditing by then-State Auditor Jim Petro and legal cues from the late U.S. District Judge Robert Krupansky. (Kasich was then in Congress.) Batchelder did step up; in the 1990s, he fathered school choice. Kasich has now partnered with Mayor Frank Jackson to pass Cleveland school reform legislation.

The practical and the ideal can dovetail. Democrats are backing a ballot issue to redo how Ohio draws congressional and legislative districts. Republicans hate the idea. If the issue makes the ballot, don't be surprised if Kasich offers black Democrats a facts-of-life argument something close to this:

The way Ohio now draws districts protects the seat of U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a black Warrensville Heights Democrat. It probably assures the election to Congress this November of black Columbus Democrat Joyce Beatty, which would, for the first time, simultaneously send two black Ohioans to the U.S. Capitol. And it guarantees significant black General Assembly membership. Were the late C.J. McLin, the Dayton Democrat who helped create today's black Statehouse caucus, around today, he might agree.

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